GG and change

[Robert R. Ratcliffe]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
bwald wrote:
 
> ----------------------------Original
> message----------------------------
> Before I forget, I have some comments on Robert Ratcliffe's last
> message. He states:
>
> >... if one takes seriously the generative claim that the
> >goal of formal linguistic analysis is the discovery of an innate,
> >biologically determined language faculty, then you sever the link
> >between historical and formal linguistics.
>
> I would like to offer a different perspective.  It is not about
"severing
> the link", but about distinguishing between what is innate and thus
> presumably immutable, unchangeable, universal etc etc, VS. everything
> else in language.  The "everything else" is what is relevant to
historical
> linguistics, because it is what varies and changes within and across
> particular languages from one time to another.  Therefore, the search
to
> isolate what is innate or invariant in all languages also serves
historical
> linguistics by revealing those aspects of language, or of any
particular
> language, which are subject to change.  The two programs complement
> each other, and work together.
 
I agree entirely with these points. But I think that the complimentarity
 
is not symmetrical. Yes, what changes in language is necessarily not
innnate, hence the study of change bears on the search for what IS (or
may be) innate.  But there is no reason to expect that a theory of an
innate language faculty, once such is developed, would have any
application to the problem of language change.
 
> So, despite  the difference in emphasis, synchronic linguistics
continues its
> historic mission to provide a grounding for the study of linguistic
change.
 
In practice I believe that this is very much the case.  I myself have
done a lot of work applying modern developments in phonology and
morphology to problems in Semitic historical morphology. And I've found
that new tools of formal linguistic analysis (in areas like syllable
structure, prosody, non-concatenative morphology) are very useful for
understanding diachronic problems that were not well understood in the
past.
 
    But I wonder why this should be the case, since in THEORY generative
 
formal linguistics is concerened with features of language which aren't
subject to change. My solution is very simple-- I simply don't believe
that generativists are really doing what they say they are doing.  As I
see it, there is a fundamental epistemological gap in the generative
paradigm, which is papered over by the notion of 'Universal Grammar'.
First, let's admit, there is good extralinguistic evidence (from
acquisition, language impariment etc.) that language has a genetic
basis-- that is for a language faculty (LF).  Second, linguistic
analysis of particular languages can uncover more general and abstract
features of language structure. (And linguists have been doing so for
millennia.) The UG 'notion' (it has never been properly formulated as a
hypothesis) is simply the assertion or assumption that these two things
are identical-- that the LF is a body of knowledge of some subset of the
 
principles discovered by formal linguistic analysis. Some people are
misled into thinking that  arguments for LF are arguments for UG. They
are not. UG is only one way of conceiveing the language faculty. The
language faculty could be, for example, an ability to extract and
construct knowledge, rather than a body of knowledge of, say, parts of
speech and syntactic constructs. Similarly  general (or even universal)
principles of language structure discovered by analysis may not be
directly attributable to a special genetic endowment.
 
    So increasinlgy  I have come to read generative work as simply a
continuation of structuralist formal analysis, and to regard the notion
of UG as something of a smoke screen-- which makes it possible for
linguists to claim they are doing natural science, while in fact they
are doing social science. That is in studying languages (or certainly at
 
least in studying language change), we are studying cultural artifacts.
Of course the supposed dichotomy between language as cultural artifact
and language as genetic endowment is entirely false.  All cultural
artifacts are a product of the human genetic endowment, and all social
sciences can be reduced to natural science (subranches of that subranch
of biology which deals with the behavior of social animals), if one
wishes.  My point ultimately is that I think we can make more progress
in understanding language if we regard the general characteristics of
languages as one thing, and the genetic endowment which makes possible
the learning and construction of languages as something else, and if we
regard the relationship between these two things as a question open for
empirical investigation rather than simply assume that this relationship
 
is captured by the notion of UG.
 
 
 
    By the way, I'd like to thank Anthony Kroch and David Lightfoot for
informing me off list about work of theirs on these issues.  I hope to
have time to read these works carefully before pontificating further. In
 
the meantime, I'd much appreciate further comments and discussion. (And
thanks to Benji Wald and Isidore Dyen for their comments so far.)
 
 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Robert R. Ratcliffe
Senior Lecturer, Arabic and Linguistics,
Dept. of Linguistics and Information Science
Tokyo University of Foreign Studies
Nishigahara 4-51-21, Kita-ku
Tokyo 114 Japan